Nginx - can't open php files from a different directory -ERR: failed (13: Permission denied)

Question

I have set a nginx, php-fpm, mysql and phpMyAdmin on my laptop (running Arch Linux). Everything was ok till I tried to move the root in my home directory.

Here is the nginx configuration file I'm using:

#user html;
#user root root;

worker_processes  2;

error_log  logs/error.log;
error_log  logs/error.log  notice;
error_log  logs/error.log  info;

#pid        logs/nginx.pid;

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
    include       mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;
    sendfile        on;
    #tcp_nopush     on;
    #keepalive_timeout  0;
    keepalive_timeout  65;
    gzip  on;

    server {
        ############### General Settings ###################
        listen       80;
        server_name  localhost;
        root   /home/me/Development;
        charset utf-8;

        ############## Document Root #####################
        location  / {
            index  index.php index.html index.htm;
            autoindex on;
        }

        ############## PHPMyAdmin #######################
        location /phpmyadmin {
            rewrite ^/* /phpMyAdmin last;
        }

        ############# Error redirection pages ################
        error_page  404               NGINX/html/404.html;
        error_page  500 502 503 504   NGINX/html/50x.html;

        ############## Proxy Settings for FastCGI PHP Server #####
        location ~ \.php$ {

            try_files  $uri =404;
            #fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; (depending on your php-fpm socket configuration)
            fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock;
            fastcgi_index index.php;
            fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
            include fastcgi.conf;
        }

        location ~ /\.ht {
            deny  all;
        }

    }         
}

When i try to reach a php file (localhost/phpMyAdmin) I get the following error:

2016/05/20 16:33:12 [error] 8145#8145: *2 "/home/me/Development/phpMyAdmin/index.php" is forbidden (13: Permission denied), client: 127.0.0.1, server: localhost, request: "GET /phpMyAdmin/ HTTP/1.1", host: "localhost"

I've tried to change the rights(777 -not really a good idea) and the owner (username:username) of "Development" folder but with no success.

also I have added in the nginx.conf file the following line:

user root root;

But this caused an error with the connecting of the php-fpm. I also has this line of code in my php.ini to make sure the the new directory is allowed path for php.

open_basedir= /srv/http/:/home/:/tmp/:/usr/share/pear/:/usr/share/webapps/:/etc/webapps/:/usr/:/home/me/Development/

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

Your home directory is protected from reading by other users. And starting nginx as root is a REALY bad idea. If you realy need your project to be located in your home directory try to start nginx and php-fpm as your user you login as. don't forget to chown all nginx service directories (/var/run/nginx and so on)